Works

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain, --
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.

The mountain at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little, --...

I.

Deluded swain, the pleasure
The fickle fair can give thee,
Is but a fairy treasure -
Thy hopes will soon deceive thee.

II.

The billows on the ocean,...

Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,...

How do I hate the tide of vulgar thought!
Profane, unjust, with childish folly fraught;
It breaks and bends the rays of truth divine,
And by its own conceptions measures mine.
Famed Epicurus' master[1] tried...

How I have always hated the opinions of the mob! To me, a mob seems profane, unjust, and rash, putting false construction on all things, and judging every matter by a mob-made standard.
...

M'sieu Paul Joulin, de Notaire Publique
Is come I s'pose seexty year hees life
An' de mos' riche man on Sainte Angelique
W'en he feel very sorry he got no wife,...

AN INCIDENT OF THE CANADIAN REBELLION OF 1837.


Bon jour, M'sieu', you want to know
'Bout dat ole gun, w'at good she's for?
W'y! Jean Bateese Bruneau, mon pere,
Fight wit' dat gun on Pap'neau War!...

I

The face, which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With hourly love, is dimmed away
And yet my days go on, go on.

II
...

When I am dead unto myself, and let,
O Father, thee live on in me,
Contented to do nought but pay my debt,
And leave the house to thee,

Then shall I be thy ransomed--from the cark...

Ah! days so dark with death's eclipse!
Woe are we! woe are we!
And the nights are ages long!
From breaking hearts, thro' pallid lips
O my God! woe are we!
Trembleth the mourner's song;...

The Two Greetings.

I.

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirl'd for a million 'ons thro' the vast...

Oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.

I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;...

I thought today within the crowded mart
I saw thee for a moment, friend of mine,
And all at once my blood leapt fast and fine
And a new light broke on my shadowed heart....

Down in the deeps of dark despair and woe; -
Of Death expectant; - Hope I put aside;
Counting the heartbeats, slowly, yet more slow, -
Marking the lazy ebb of life's last tide....

Turn thine eyes from me, Angel of Heaven--
Read not my soul, Angel of Heaven--
Sorrow is steeping my pale cheeks with weeping,
Evermore keeping her wand on my heart,...

I beg your pity, You, my only love;
My fallen heart lies in a deep abyss,
A universe of leaden heaviness,
Where cursing terrors swim the night above!

For six months stands a sun with heatless beams,...

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
- Ps. ci

Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;...

"Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me
. . . Non est qui requirat animam meam." - Ps. cxli.

When the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong...

"Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum
habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea." - Ps. cxix.

There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come -...

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
...